Alex’s POV~

“Alex, can you please come down already?!”

“NO!” I cried, hugging my knees closer to my chest.

“Alex, c’mon! We’re sorry!” Donghae called again.

“Sorry doesn’t cut it, buddy!” I replied.

“Alex, if you don’t come down, I’m gonna go up there and kill you! I just got home after ten hours of scheduling and if I lose anymore sleep, I’m goin’ to jail for you murder! Now get your stubborn down here this instant!” I heard Heechul yell followed by a shout of protest and a punch landing its target.

“Don’t you dare talk to my baby sister that way!” Donghae yelled, followed by the sound of another punch.

“Don’t you dare hit me when I’m running off of no sleep and in a bad mood!” Heechul responded.

“Yah, Alex, c’mon! We’ll have someone else do the laundry and cooking! Just come down!” I heard Kyuhyun’s voice yelling.

“Just go away and leave me alone! YOU GUYS ARE DRIVING ME FREAKING INSANE!” I screamed, covering my ears to block out the rest of their demands for me to come down.

I was so sick and tired of this! Me doing everything for them just so they can ruin it! Three hours. THREE HOURS I spent doing all their damn laundry and Sungmin and Henry decide they wanna have a water war and drenched all the clothes, completely ruining them! I’M ABOUT TO FREAKING GO INSANE WITHOUT UKI HERE TO MEDIATE! Aish, Uki, why’d you have to leave?! Why’d you have to be all smart and whatnot and leave me for college?! T____T I sniffled, realizing that I was crying frustrated tears now. ARGH! I uncovered my ears and impatiently wiped them away. The boys were still yelling at me!

Except this time…

“Alex! C’mon, you can’t go insane on them yet! Schedules are just barely getting started! They’re about to have a comeback for cryin’ out loud and you’re going insane now? Unacceptable missy! You better get down from that roof this instant before I grant Heechul full authority to go up there and get you down,” I heard Uki’s demanding voice say.

I looked over the roof to see the boys sticking their heads out the window, Uki’s face on the laptop screen they were holding out as well.

“Uki, you don’t know what they did! Sungmin and Henry completely ruined all the laundry I spent three hours doing!” I cried.

“Then make them redo the laundry! Why are you up on the roof for?! You’re gonna catch a cold!” Uki chastised.

“Oh, you’re one to speak,” I heard Leeteuk mutter.

“Hey! Do you want her down or not?!” Uki snapped. “Look, Alex, be angry at them all you want. Trust me, I spent a good portion of my visit over there angry at them. But don’t go insane yet. If you go insane now, there’s no telling how you’ll be when it actually starts gettin’ nitty gritty. Their schedules are just gonna get even crazier from here and their concerts are just gonna get worse and worse. C’mon, Alex.”

“I don’t wanna come down yet! If I go down, I have a feeling that someone’s gonna die tonight!”

“Alright, so here are your choices. Either you get down willingly, or Heechul’s comin’ up. And don’t think I don’t know about that steel bar blocking the doorway—” I gulped as my eyes quickly flickered to the door with the rusted steel pipe barring anyone from opening it. How the hell did she know about that?! “—‘cause there are ways to break that down, especially if you’re a sleep-deprived, grouchy Kim Heechul.”

“Alex, I’m getting impatient. You have a total of thirty seconds before I go up there and tear through that damn door,” I heard Heechul say.

I took a deep breath and stood. “Alright, alright, I’m coming down.”

“Thank you, Uki!” I heard Donghae exclaim as I walked toward the door.

“Yeah, thanks, Uki,” I grumbled.

I pulled the bar out from its place and set it aside carefully, opening the door and stepping inside to the elevator. Aish. Uki was right. If I was going insane now, there really is no telling how crazy I’ll be when their comeback nears. And I thought Bonamana was bad? I don’t think so. As time goes on, the guys were only gaining more and more popularity, meaning that the ELFs were really gonna go crazy when this comeback finally happens. Aish, I think I’m gonna die. Uki, goddamnit, hurry up and get back here! I can’t do this alone!

The *ding!* of the elevator interrupted my thoughts as I stepped out into the hallway and up to the door, anticipating them to jump me the moment I walked inside. I nervously turned the doorknob, poking my head in, only to be yanked into someone’s bone-crushing embrace.

“Alex! Don’t you ever do that to me again, arasso?! You scared me!” he yelled, his cheek against mine.

“Aish, Donghae! Let go of me this instant!” I yelled, trying my best to push him away, but that boy had a death grip on me.

“No! You scared the living daylights outta me!” he yelled, only hugging me tighter.

“Aish! Uki went up there all the time! I never saw you guys doing any of this to her!” I exclaimed indignantly, finally managing to get him to let go by elbowing him in the ribs.

“That’s ‘cause she always fell asleep when she was up there. We never could get to her,” I heard someone say, a smile obviously behind their words.

I looked up to see Leeteuk smiling slightly to himself. Oh no. Please tell me that he was over her already. I mean, jeez! She and Donghae have been together for almost a year now, and he’s still in love with her?! No, no, that just won’t do.

“Is Uki gone?” I asked, looking around for the laptop that just wasn’t there.

“Yeah. She said she had some stuff to do. She’s been a little off lately,” Donghae responded, scratching the back of his head. “Do you know anything?”

“She’s probably just in one of those moods about her paralysis again,” I answered, shrugging my shoulders. “Ever since then, she’s never really been the same Uki.”

“I’ve noticed that, too. Do you think she’ll ever be the same?” Sungmin asked.

I shrugged my shoulders again. “You guys tell me. You’ve known her longer.”

“Well, it is paralysis. It’s kind of a permanent thing. I don’t blame her for having a hard time putting up with it,” Kyuhyun said. “I mean, just imagine it. You were pretty much a near perfect human being and then all of a sudden, half of you gets paralyzed. I’m surprised she’s been okay with it for this long and hasn’t cracked yet.”

“Poor Uki. I just realized she can never play the violin again,” Henry said, a sad look immediately taking over his face. “Sucha shame, too. She was an amazing violinist.”

“Aish, don’t think about the things she can’t do. Think of the things that she can do,” I said, my anger from before completely melting away. “I mean, at least she’s still alive. At least she can still walk. At least she can still think for herself. And I don’t know if you guys have noticed yet, but in the past three months, I don’t think I’ve seen her once use her ventilator while we were Skyping. She’s making definite improvements.”

“I really hate that we’re not there with her helping her through all this,” Leeteuk said, chewing his lower lip thoughtfully. “She needs some sort of pillar of support.”

“From what I could see, she has good friends taking care of her,” I said, trying my best to reassure all of them. “But in the time being, all we can do is pray for her and wait until she comes here so we can take care of her for a change. Which means! That if any of you decide you wanna have a water fight and ruin my laundry again, I’m killing every single one of you so the only person I have to take care of is Uki, arasso?!”

“Arasso,” they all agreed.

I directed my glare especially at Sungmin and Henry, who hung their heads in shame.

“Mianhe, Alex,” they said in unison.

Uki’s POV~

“Miss Choi! Are we going to have to go through this every day?”

I sighed and lifted my head up. “I was not sleeping, Professor White, I was simply staring at my notebook.”

“Lying will get you nowhere in life,” she told me, her steely gaze boring holes through me.

My lips curled in anger. “I’m not lying!”

The entire class fell into a deathly, suffocating silence at my sudden outburst.

“E-excuse me?” Professor White stammered, clearly taken aback by my outburst.

“Call me whatever you want. A bad student, an evil girl, a lazy person, but don’t you dare, under any circumstances, call. Me. A liar.” I glared at her. I was up all night last night, worrying about Alex’s sanity and health while staying with the guys, plus trying to wake up my damn body—which was still in its sling, by the way—and I was in one of my depressed moods last night. I woke up this morning feeling as though I’d just been beaten all over again and I dragged myself to this class just to have her call me a liar?! I THINK HELL TO THE ING NO!

I could literally feel all the air being out of the classroom as all the students held their breaths, their gazes flickering from me to Professor White and then back again. In my peripheral vision, I could see James nervously chewing his lower lip, but I didn’t care. I can tolerate alotta crap in life and I can tolerate alotta stupid people, but I cannot tolerate stupid people’s crap mainly because they just never know when to shut up! Just like this one!

“I will not be talked to in this manner, Miss Choi. I don’t know how your parents raised you, but in my classro—”

I let out a scream and shoved all my books to the floor, flipping over my desk in anger. Grabbing my purse and my pen off the floor, I glared at her as I walked up to her desk. “DON’T. YOU. EVER. SPEAK. ABOUT. MY. PARENTS.”

And then the sound of me slamming the door shut so hard that the walls shook cut off any and all response she could have thought of. I literally shook from the ridiculous anger I felt. Who did that woman think she was, talking to me like that?! She doesn’t know my parents! She doesn’t know how I was raised! She doesn’t know me for cryin’ out loud, so how dare she speak to me like that?! Just as I was about to stomp down the hallway, the door opened and a reassuring hand gently took hold of my upper arm. I spun around on my heels, about ready to cuss out whoever had the audacity to come after me, but all that anger completely melted away when I saw James standing in front of me. I burst into tears, throwing myself into his arms.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he said in his soothing voice. “Professor White is just ridiculous. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about and if I could, I’d go in there and snipe her just for you.”

I chuckled through my tears, not wanting to let go of him. And then I started laughing when I realized that he was speaking in Korean so no one would understand him. That sly boy.

“C’mon. Let’s head back to your apartment, eh? You needa take a day off and seriously just relax,” he said, pulling me to arms’ length so he could look me full in the face.

“J-James, I c-can’t let you do th-that,” I managed to hiccup, wiping away my pathetic tears. “Y-you’ve never m-missed a day of cl-class in your l-life!”

“There’s a first for everything,” he said with that killer smile of his. He slung his arm around my shoulders, leaving no room for protest as he pulled me toward the door. “Besides, we’re college students. They don’t care if we ditch or not, just so long as we don’t blame them for later failing tests and falling behind in class.”

I smiled, wiping away the last of my ridiculous tears. “I w-wanna take my exams e-early.”

“Bwoh?” He looked down at me, stopping just as we were at the doorway. “Uki, you’re freaking crazy if you do that! There’s still a month’s worth of material we haven’t covered and you wanna take them now? This isn’t high school! You can’t miss out on a month’s worth of material and seriously expect to pass!”

I shook my head, dead-set on my decision. “I need to f-freaking get out of this place. I need to see my b-boys again.”

“Yah, Uki. Your boys are still going to be there no matter it be a month from now or a year from now. You worked too hard to get here just to blow everything off. This is your PhD we’re talking about here. This can lead to your own law firm!” His chocolate eyes were trying its best to sway my decision, but I shook my head.

“N-no, James. I n-need to get out of here,” I repeated firmly. “I have f-faith in my a-abilities to pass.”

He sighed and nodded, seeing that I clearly wasn’t going to be giving up on my decision. “Alright, alright. I suppose it’s useless arguing against you. Now c’mon. If I remember correctly, there’s a gallon of Cookies N’ Crème calling our names back at your place.”

I smiled, allowing myself to be led to my apartment. I loved James, man. He always knew the best ways to deal with things, even if I didn’t wanna admit it to myself. That was his Leeteuk side taking over. The side that made sure that everyone else around him was feeling okay and doing everything in his power to make them feel better if they weren’t. He was just like Siwon except for the whole over protectiveness thing Siwon’s got goin’ for him…Actually, I never had the chance to test that theory out yet.

The moment we stepped inside my apartment, I dropped my purse on the table in the hallway and said, “I’ll be back. I’m gonna go change first.”

“Alright,” he responded as I was walking away. “I’ve gotta surprise for you when you come back!”

I stopped, turning back to him. “Surprise?”

“Go change first! You’ll see when you get back,” he said, that teasing light in his eyes again.

I gave him a look of suspicion before I nodded slightly and walked off to go change.

James’ POV~

She’ll love me forever for this~

What on Earth could James be planning? ;D

I think bits and pieces of a plot are forming here? Kekeke~